September 3, 2018

Nymphs, generally speaking, emerge soon after sunset. When I look for nymphs, I wait until sunset and start looking around tree roots and on tree trunks. Sometimes it takes hours, but usually, I find one (or many).

Cicada Nymph:

Adult cicadas are easiest to find on hot, humid nights in well-lit areas like parking lots and the sides of buildings. You will find them clinging to illuminated walls and crawling on sidewalks. They end up on the ground, often because they fly into the wall and stun themselves. On a hot humid night — 85F or above — I’ll find an excuse (usually frozen desserts) to check the walls of the local supermarket for cicadas.

Cicadas, like many insects, are attracted to (or confused by) lights. There are many theories as to why insects are attracted to lights, and the reasons why probably vary by species. My guess (and this is just a guess) is that cicadas can’t tell day from night, or daylight (sun) from artificial lights, and so they think they’re using light to navigate away from a dark area (a tree trunk, dense brush), and then get very confused because they never seem to get anywhere once they reach the source of the light. I wish I could ask a cicada why.

August 26, 2018

Time-lapse videos of insects molting can be as visually fascinating as they are scientifically important. Cicadas are amongst the best insect subjects for time-lapse because they’re relatively large, and depending on where you live, easy to find.

Equipment you’ll need for your time-lapse video:

Lights. I use cheap LED and fluorescent lights. Not enough light and you’ll end up with a grainy video. Too much light and you’ll over-expose the subject and miss some important details. You’ll need a stand or tripod for your lights as well.

A tripod for your camera. You want your camera to be as steady as possible. Hand-holding the camera is not recommended. The molting process takes hours.

A camera. Some cameras have a Time-Lapse mode, but you could also take a photo every 30 seconds or so and use software to assemble the photos into a video. A camera with a large view screen is recommended so you can make adjustments to the lighting and framing of the insect.

A platform for your cicada/insect. If you film outside use the tree the insect decides to molt on. If you film inside, build a structure using tree branches, or other materials the nymph can anchor onto.

Video editing software. Free software works fine, as long as it lets you compile a series of photos into a single video.

I made my own platform out of some driftwood and a 2×4 I had lying around. Cheap but effective. Cicadas need to hang perpendicular to the ground so their wings will properly expand, so your creation needs to allow for that. A lot of people simply use a roll of paper towel.

Skills you’ll need to practice

Patience. Unless you’re a pro who films wildlife all the time, you might need a few tries to get it right.

Learn how to use the Time-Lapse feature of your camera.

Learn how to light a small subject like a cicada.

The ability to stay up late. The entire molting process can take up to 5-6 hours, especially if you want to let the cicada’s wings and body harden a bit. Coffee or tea helps (you, not the cicada).

If you’ve never tried filming a cicada molting before, you can practice lighting, focusing and using the time-lapse features of your camera with a paper model of a cicada. Just draw a cicada onto a small piece of paper, and pin it to a tree. If you know origami, even better.

Finding a specimen

I begin looking for cicada nymphs about 15 minutes after sunset. I find them at the base of trees, or ascending tree trunks. If you plan on filming indoors, or on a custom platform, treat the cicada with care. Be very gentle, and place the cicada nymph in a spacious enclosure — preferably one that allows it to grip, and hang off the side. I transport cicadas in a pop-up butterfly pavilion/habitat — these portable enclosures are made for butterflies, but they work well for other insects, like cicadas. Don’t forget to release the cicada the following day as well.

The overall process for shooting indoors

Set up your rig: platform, lights, camera. Make sure your camera has an empty memory card in it and is charged/plugged in. Make sure all the lights are working. Place a towel or something soft at the base of the platform, in case the cicada falls (it happens).

Collect your specimen. Bring a flashlight and a butterfly pavilion (or similar container). Gently grab the cicada nymph with your fingers and place in the container. do not collect a cicada that has already begun molting. Take some (not a lot) of tree branches with you. You can use the branches to augment your platform.

Place the cicada at the base of the platform. Let it explore and become comfortable. Place it back at the base of the platform if it falls or wanders off.

Once the cicada is ready to molt, it will stay still for a while. This is a good time to get your camera in focus and lights in the right position.

The skin of the back of the nymph will split — look and listen for that. Start time-lapse filming. Example.

Re-frame the camera as necessary to capture the cicada’s wings as they inflate.

An hour after the cicada’s wings move into place (see that happen), you can stop filming, and place the cicada into the safety of the butterfly pavilion — or on a tree outside.

Return the cicada to the outdoors within 12 hours.

Use video editing software to compile the time-lapse frames into a video. I set each frame to 0.2 seconds — experiment with the times.

Add the species of the cicada, the location where you found it, and other comments to the video.

Share your video with friends, family and the world.

More tips:

The process takes a long time — you might be up until 1 or 2 am in the morning. Be prepared for that.

Film some non-time-lapse video as well. There are key moments during the molting process that happen quickly, like when the cicada pulls its abdomen from its old skin. Having a video of that is nice.

Be prepared to adjust the framing and focus a few times during the shoot. Don’t adjust too much though — just if the cicada’s wings fall out of frame.

The cicada will double its overall size. Its wings will hang downward. Be prepared for that when you frame the shot.

Some results:

My latest time-lapse video:

Notice how I frame the video.

A non-time-lapse detail:

A video where I used a tree branch to make the molting look more natural

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September 21, 2017

Today is September 21st, 2017 — the last day of Summer, in central New Jersey. Leaves of maple trees have started to turn scarlet and yellow. Oaks are dropping their acorns. The few, remaining Morning (Neotibicen tibicen tibicen) and Linne’s (Neotibicen linnei) cicadas sound decrepit and tired — like tiny breaking machines, low on fuel and oil. I found one dead Morning cicada lying on a sidewalk — its body crushed. Here in New Jersey, at least, the cicada season is all but over.

Molting Neotibicen tibicen tibicen in Little Silver, NJ. August 26st.

As cicada years go, this one had ups and downs. It wasn’t as awesome as 2016, but I can’t blame the cicadas.

Downs:

No group cicada hunts this year. My cicada hobby is much more fun when I can share it with other people.

A skunk took over my favorite spot for finding Morning Cicada nymphs.

I had to go on a business trip during what would have been the best weeks for finding nymphs.

I found a new Megatibicen auletes location in Highlands, NJ. The location is about 50 miles north of where I usually find them.

I found more Megatibicen auletes exuvia than ever at the Manchester, NJ location where my friends and I normally hunt for auletes. Normally I find one or two — this year I found dozens. I found no adult specimens, other than those singing in the trees at dusk.

I found a small but productive Neotibicen canicularis location in Little Silver, NJ. This yielded several specimens for a few good photos.

I did find enough exuvia & Morning cicadas that I should be happy.

Here’s some images from this summer:

Neotibicen tibicen tibicen with bad wing. The indigo color is fascinating. August 9th.

A Neotibicen tibicen tibicen found during a lunchtime stroll. September 1st.

A female Neotibicen canicularis found in Little Silver, NJ. August 25th.

September 19, 2017

Sometimes the best cicada locations are just a short distance from your home. This summer I came across a grove of pine trees that had two species of Neotibicen: Neotibicen linnei (Linne’s Cicada) and Neotibicen canicularis (Dog-Day Cicada). Neotibicen linnei and Neotibicen canicularis look very similar when they’re adults (appearances vary by location), so it helpful to compare the two species.

This image compares Neotibicen linnei and canicularis when they’ve recently molted (teneral). Note that the N. linnei is yellow and green, while the N. canicularis is a pink/salmon color.

This image compares these cicadas approximately 24 hours after molting. Note that they’ve achieved their adult coloring, which is very similar, but you can see vestiges of the pink on the N. canicularis.

This last image compares the wing shape of N. linnei (foreground) and N. canicularis (background). Both cicadas are standing on the same piece of white paper. The wings of the N. linnei have a sharper bend — see how the tip of the wing is lifted far off the surface of the paper, while the wing of the N. canicularis almost sits on the paper. Also note that the N. linnei is a more vibrant green, and the N. canicularis is more of a drab/olive green.

July 5, 2017

Dusk is the time of day between sunset and night. Many species of Megatibicen & Neotibicen (formerly Tibicen) sing at this time. I’m not sure why they sing at this time — perhaps it helps them avoid audio competition with other singing insects, or perhaps it helps them avoid predators by calling at this specific time of the day.

If you find yourself outdoors in the eastern half of the U.S. after sunset and hear a cicada call, it is likely one of the following Megatibicen or Neotibicen species:

June 24, 2017

Dog-day cicada is the common name given to Tibicen (now Neotibicen) type cicadas in North America. These cicadas are called “Dog Day” because they are typically observed during the “Dog Days of Summer“, which fall somewhere between late July to early September, or once the “Dog Star” Sirius appears in the morning sky. All Neotibicen species are present during the month of August in North America.

These cicadas do not actually appear the moment Sirius rises, and when they do appear depends on your location and the weather. Neotibicen canicularis will appear in Arkansas before it appears in Quebec. That said, if you are curious when Sirius will rise in your area, search for “heliacal rising of sirius” — it varies about a day per degree of latitude. Neotibicen, depending on the species, can be found from May to December (December in Florida), but all Neotibicen species are present during the month of August in North America.

May 31, 2017

A new subspecies of the Similar Dog-Day Cicada has been described in the paper A new Neotibicen cicada subspecies (Hemiptera: Cicadidae) from the southeastern USA forms hybrid zones with a widespread relative despite a divergent male calling song by David C. Marshall and Kathy B. R. Hill (Zootaxa, Vol 4272, No 4). The cicada is named Neotibicen similaris apalachicola.

This cicada lives in Florida, Georgia & Alabama, and hybridizes with the other Similar Dog-Day Cicada sub-speces, Neotibicen similaris similaris. The document is available on biotaxa.org.

A morphologically cryptic subspecies of Neotibicen similaris (Smith and Grossbeck) is described from forests of the Apalachicola region of the southeastern United States. Although the new form exhibits a highly distinctive male calling song, it hybridizes extensively where it meets populations of the nominate subspecies in parapatry, by which it is nearly surrounded. This is the first reported example of hybridization between North American nonperiodical cicadas. Acoustic and morphological characters are added to the original description of the nominate subspecies, and illustrations of complex hybrid song phenotypes are presented. The biogeography of N. similaris is discussed in light of historical changes in forest composition on the southeastern Coastal Plain.

December 4, 2016

For some reason I associate “Giga” with “Gigabytes” and storage media like Flash drives, which explains this joke image.

Over the past two years there have been quite a few updates to the genera of the cicadas that were organized under the Tibicen genus earlier this decade.

The most recent paper by Young June Lee introduces the genera Gigatibicen, Ameritibicen, and Paratibicen1. Earlier this year there was a paper by Allen Sanborn and Maxine Heath that introduced the genus Megatibicen 3, and in 2015 there was a paper by Kathy Hill and others that introduced Neotibicen and Hadoa 2.

See the end of the article for links to these papers, and related articles on CicadaMania.com.

The table below shows the names/synonyms (sub species have been removed to keep the table compact):

(Tibicen circa 2014)

Hill (2015)2

Sanborn, Heath (2016)3

Lee (2016)1

Tibicen auletes

Neotibicen auletes

Megatibicen auletes

Gigatibicen auletes

Tibicen auriferus

Neotibicen auriferus

no change

no change

Tibicen canicularis

Neotibicen canicularis

no change

no change

Tibicen cultriformis

Neotibicen cultriformis

Megatibicen cultriformis

Ameritibicen cultriformis

Tibicen davisi davisi

Neotibicen davisi

no change

no change

Tibicen dealbatus

Neotibicen dealbatus

Megatibicen dealbatus

Ameritibicen dealbatus

Tibicen dorsatus

Neotibicen dorsatus

Megatibicen dorsatus

Ameritibicen dorsatus

Tibicen figuratus

Neotibicen figuratus

Megatibicen figuratus

Ameritibicen figuratus

Tibicen latifasciatus

Neotibicen latifasciatus

no change

no change

Tibicen linnei

Neotibicen linnei

no change

no change

Tibicen lyricen engelhardti

Neotibicen lyricen

no change

no change

Tibicen pronotalis pronotalis

Neotibicen pronotalis

Megatibicen pronotalis

Ameritibicen pronotalis

Tibicen pruinosus fulvus

Neotibicen pruinosus

no change

no change

Tibicen resh

Neotibicen resh

Megatibicen resh

Gigatibicen resh

Tibicen resonans

Neotibicen resonans

Megatibicen resonans

Gigatibicen resonans

Tibicen robinsonianus

Neotibicen robinsonianus

no change

no change

Tibicen similaris

Neotibicen similaris

no change

Paratibicen similaris

Tibicen superbus

Neotibicen superbus

no change

no change

Tibicen tibicen australis

Neotibicen tibicen

no change

no change

Tibicen tremulus

Neotibicen tremulus

Megatibicen tremulus

Ameritibicen tremulus

Tibicen winnemanna

Neotibicen winnemanna

no change

no change

Tibicen bifidus

Hadoa bifida

no change

no change

Tibicen chiricahua

Hadoa chiricahua

no change

no change

Tibicen duryi

Hadoa duryi

no change

no change

Tibicen inauditus

Hadoa inaudita

no change

no change

Tibicen longioperculus

Hadoa longiopercula

no change

no change

Tibicen neomexicensis

Hadoa neomexicensis

no change

no change

Tibicen parallelus

Hadoa parallela

no change

no change

Tibicen simplex

Hadoa simplex

no change

no change

Tibicen texanus

Hadoa texana

no change

no change

Tibicen townsendii

Hadoa townsendii

no change

no change

1 Lee, Y.J. 2016. Description of three new genera, Paratibicen, Gigatibicen, and Ameritibicen, of Cryptotympanini (Hemiptera: Cicadidae) and a key to their species Journal of Asia-Pacific Biodiversity, Volume 9, Issue 4, 1 December 2016, Pages 448–454. Link to Paper.

2 Hill, et al. 2015. Molecular phylogenetics, diversification, and systematics of Tibicen Latreille 1825 and allied cicadas of the tribe Cryptotympanini, with three new genera and emphasis on species from the USA and Canada (Hemiptera: Auchenorrhyncha: Cicadidae), Zootaxa, Volume 3985, Issue 2, Pages 219–251. Link to Paper

September 17, 2016

Update (9/24): I neglected to note that there’s another paper out there by Young June Lee called Description of three new genera, Paratibicen, Megatibicen, and Ameritibicen, of Cryptotympanini (Hemiptera: Cicadidae) and a key to their species. Link to it here. This manuscript goes beyond one new genera, and instead introduces three: Paratibicen, Megatibicen, and Ameritibicen. Lee’s paper differs from Sanborn & Heath in that the large Neotibicen are spit into Megatibicen and Ameritibicen in Young’s document, but they’re all Megatibicen in Sanborn & Heath’s paper.

Last night I had a rough night’s sleep. I tossed and turned all night long. I remember looking at the clock and seeing 4am, and thinking “tomorrow is ruined”. Sometime during the night I dreamt of finding thousands of molted Neotibicen exuvia clinging to shrubbery — a rare if not impossible sight in real life.

When I woke I checked my email and found a communication from David Marshall. David is well known and respected in the cicada world for many things including describing the 7th species of Magicicada with John Cooley (link to document), as well as being part of the team who defined the Neotibicen and Hadoa genera (link to paper)1.

David wrote to let me know that Allen F. Sanborn and Maxine S. Heath had published a new paper titled: Megatibicen n. gen., a new North American cicada genus (Hemiptera: Cicadidae: Cicadinae: Cryptotympanini), 2016, Zootaxa Vol 4168, No 3.(link).

So, what is MEGATIBICEN? Assumptions after the abstract.

Here is the abstract:

The genus Tibicen has had a confusing history (see summary in Boulard and Puissant 2014; Marshall and Hill 2014; Sanborn 2014). Boulard and his colleague (Boulard 1984; 1988; 1997; 2001; 2003; Boulard and Puissant 2013; 2014; 2015) have argued for the suppression of Tibicen and the taxa derivatived from it in favor of Lyristes Horváth. Boulard’s argument for suppression was first described in Melville and Sims (1984) who presented the case for suppression to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature with further comments made by Hamilton (1985), Boulard (1985), and Lauterer (1985). A lack of action resulted in additional comments being published in 2014 again supporting the retention (Sanborn 2014; Marshall and Hill 2014) or the suppression (Boulard and Puissant 2014) of Tibicen.

My guess, without reading the document, is that Megatibicen includes the larger North America Neotibicen species, including the “auletes group” (N. auletes, N. resh, N. figuratus, N. resonans), the “pronotalis group” (N. pronotalis, N. dealbatus, N. cultriformis) and the “dorsatus group” (N. dorsatus, N. tremulus), or a mix of these. N. auletes is the largest cicada in North America. “Mega” is the Greek word for “very large” or “great”. Word is that Kathy Hill and David Marshall also planned on describing a Megatibicen genus at one point, as well.

Whenever cicada names change it causes feelings of bemusement, discontentment and discomfort amongst some cicada researches and fans. I know I don’t like it because I have to update the names of cicadas in 100’s of places on this website ;). Some folks simply disagree with the folks writing the paper. Some people prefer former names because they sound nicer (e.g. N. chloromerus vs N. tibicen tibicen). Some people simply do not like change.

1 Hill, et al. Molecular phylogenetics, diversification, and systematics of Tibicen Latreille 1825 and allied cicadas of the tribe Cryptotympanini, with three new genera and emphasis on species from the USA and Canada (Hemiptera: Auchenorrhyncha: Cicadidae) 2015, Zootaxa 3985 (2): 219–251.